Still Life 1913

Willy Schlobach made this oil painting, "Still Life," and its lively surfaces show a real love for the stuff of painting itself. Check out the physicality here – the way the paint sits on the canvas, thick in some spots, thinned out in others, like he was really pushing the medium around to see what it could do. There's this creamy impasto in the pink and white roses, built up from countless brushstrokes, contrasting with the fluidity of the green background which almost feels like it's been wiped away to reveal the ground beneath. The whole composition feels like a conversation, a painterly exchange between Schlobach and the many still life painters that came before him, like Manet or Fantin-Latour. It's a reminder that art's always in dialogue, never really fixed, always open to new ways of seeing.